News: Blackstone Audio to release two Lewis Shiner audiobooks later this year

I’m very pleased to report that later this year, Blackstone Audio will release two audiobooks by Lewis Shiner, the author of the World Fantasy Award-winning (and my favorite new audiobook of 2011) Glimpses.

First up, to be released November 15, is Slam, Shiner’s 1990 novel of a paroled tax evader, anarchist skateboarders, and, well, 23 cats. Called “An unqualified delight.” by Publishers Weekly and re-released in 2011 by Subterranean Press in the series of “Definitive Editions” of Shiner’s works:

“Paroled after six months’ hard time for tax evasion, Dave has landed what sounds like the perfect job–caretaker for the Texas beach house whose eccentric owner left her fortune to her 23 cats. What Dave doesn’t know is that the house is the focus of a power struggle that involves a host of bizarre characters: the beautiful, aging adventuress; the pastor of the local UFO church; Dave’s fundamentalist parole officer; a pair of treasure hunters, one blind, one deaf; and last but not least, the enigmatic Terrell–philosopher, political theorist, and escaped murderer. Allied against them are Dave’s new friends, the skateboarders squatting in the concrete castle down the road. These are society’s newest outlaws, and from them Dave will learn the real meaning of freedom in an unfree world.”

Narrator Stefan Rudnicki, who narrated Shiner’s Glimpses, said that he “recorded Slam, and it was a blast!”

Next up, due out December 15, is Shiner’s Collected Stories, the “definitive collection” of Shiner’s short fiction in the form of 41 stories.

Rudnicki produced an earlier 3-story audio collection of Shiner’s works, Missing Persons, in 2006, and returns to helm this collection as well, along with returning narrators Rex Linn (“Prodigal Son”) and David Birney (“Lizard Men of Los Angeles”). According to Rudnicki: “For Collected Stories, Rex Linn read the rest of the appropriate stories, and we still have David Birney. Other narrators include John Rubinstein, Janis Ian, Scott Brick, Kimberly Farr, Arthur Morey, Roxanne Hernandez Coyne, Kristoffer Tabori, Gabrielle de Cuir, and myself. Also, of course, Karen Joy Fowler reads her introduction.”

So! Exciting news for later this year, whether you’re a fan of Shiner, Rudnicki, or just good stories, well told.